NZ
Moby Dick breaks free from Adelaide Christmas display
Poppy Clark Nov 28 2023

SUPPLIED
`Wild storms in Adelaide have disrupted the Christmas decoration season as Moby Dick was sent downstream.

‘Moby Dick’ has been spotted being swept away downstream after breaking free from a Christmas light display in Adelaide.

Each year, the West Torrens City presents a series of Christmas displays, including Santa and his reindeer, the Wizard of Oz, the Nativity Inn, and Moby Dick.

Following a run of bad weather, the whale sculpture broke free on Tuesday and went on its own aquatic expedition down an Adelaide river.

Despite other Christmas displays staying put, a video posted by Australia’s 7 News showed the whale getting caught in branches before it began going backwards as onlookers watched and filmed.

It’s not yet known if the whale made it back.


./STUFF
Moby Dick’s whale floats away from the Christmas light display.

 

A Sumatran rhino calf born in Indonesia adds to an endangered species of fewer than 50 animals

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

November 28, 2023

 

In this undated photo released by Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry, a newly born Sumatran rhino calf walks in its enclosure at Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary at Way Kambas National Park, Indonesia. (Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry via AP)

JAKARTA--A critically endangered Sumatran rhino was born in Indonesia’s western island of Sumatra on Saturday, the second Sumatran rhino born in the country this year and a welcome addition to a species that currently numbers fewer than 50 animals.

A female named Delilah gave birth to a 25-kilogram (55-pound) male calf at a sanctuary for Sumatran rhinos in Way Kambas National Park in Lampung province, at the southern tip of Sumatra island.

The calf is fathered by a male named Harapan, who was born at the Cincinnati Zoo in 2006. He was the last Sumatran rhino in the world to be repatriated to Indonesia, meaning that the entire population of Sumatran rhinos is now in Indonesia.

Most of the remaining rhinos live on Sumatra, several in captivity. They are threatened by destruction of tropical forest habitat and poachers who kill the animals for their horns, which are prized for making ornaments and for use in traditional medicine in China and other parts of Asia.

“This birth is also the birth of the second Sumatran rhino in 2023. It emphasizes the government commitment of the Indonesian Government on the rhino conservation efforts in Indonesia, especially the Sumatran rhino,” Indonesian Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar said in a written statement.

She added that, from the semi-natural breeding efforts, there were five live births of Sumatran rhinos at the Way Kambas sanctuary.

A conservation guard found Delilah with the newborn male calf next to her on Saturday morning, 10 days earlier than the estimated date of delivery.

Delilah and her baby are in good condition as the calf is now able to stand upright and walk. Not long after he was discovered, he was able to breastfeed in a standing position, said a statement from Indonesia’ Environment and Forestry Ministry.

The Sumatran rhino is legally protected in Indonesia. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species describes the Sumatran rhinos as critically endangered: the population is declining and only about 30 mature animals remain.

The yet-to-be-named calf is the first success delivery from Delilah.

Delilah, a 7-year-old female, was born in an Indonesian sanctuary in 2016.

She was the second calf born to her mother, Ratu, who also gave birth to a male named Andatu in 2012, the first rhino birth in captivity in Indonesia in 124 years. The father, Andalas, was born at the Cincinnati Zoo in 2001.

In September, Ratu, a 23-year-old female rhino, gave birth to a female rhino at the sanctuary in Lampung. Sumatran rhinos typically have a life expectancy of 35 to 40 years, according to the WWF conservation group.

Cow of breed that produces high-end Japanese beef rakes in record $271,000 at auction

The auction was part of a contest that took place on Nov 26 in Matsusaka city in the central prefecture of Mie. 

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: UNSPLASH

Keval Singh
Correspondent

A cow of the famous Matsusaka wagyu breed has fetched a whopping price of 30.04 million yen (S$271,000) at an auction in Japan.

This was the highest amount paid in eight years, the NHK reported.

The auction was part of a contest that took place on Nov 26 in Matsusaka city in the central prefecture of Mie.


The 676kg cow was crowned “Queen of Matsusaka” before being sold at the auction. The animal was bought by Asahiya Corp, a meat wholesaler and retailer in the prefectural capital of Tsu.

The winning cow was among 50 entrants at the competition. They were rated by a panel of nine judges who evaluated them based on size, coat and overall physical balance.

The cow was raised by farmer Kazuaki Nakamura. The 47-year-old told the media that he was “totally surprised” by the outcome but happy.

Mr Nakamura said his winning cow is “quiet” and “very healthy”.

“I fed her based on observations of her physical condition, and talked to her while brushing her,” The Mainichi newspaper quoted him as saying.

This was Mr Nakamura’s second win since 2018, the paper reported.

Asahiya said it will hold a “famous cattle festival” beginning on Dec 14. It will start selling meat from the winning cow from around Dec 21.

Matsusaka City is famous for its premium marbled beef. The city’s cattle show is an annual event that is held in November, according to the website Wagyu Authentic.

The Matsusaka Beef Contest features 50 premium Matsusaka cattle and the auction of the “queen” cow and other winning cattle is usually held after the contest.

NZ
No doubt now that anti-Māori sentiment powered the election result

OPINION: Policies be damned. The coalition deal shows the power of anti-Māori sentiment in deciding the election.

Joel Maxwell, Nov 28 2023

Christopher Luxon announces new government

The incoming prime minister, alongside ACT leader David Seymour and NZ First leader Winston Peters, has unveiled the coalition agreement between the three political parties.

It’s quite a to-do list. In the coming months and years, the Government will have its hands full allowing the removal of already-established Māori wards in councils; deleting the already-established Māori health authority; purging ministries of primarily Māori names and communication; throwing Three Waters out with the co-governance bathwater; throwing co-governance out of public services; rewiring legislation to shake out unworthy Treaty principles; dumping the entire 2022 Ngāi Tahu regional council law; scrutinising initiatives to increase Māori doctors.

All while laying the groundwork for a monumental battle over ACT’s potential Treaty principles referendum.

It is future-averse. It is petty to a fault. It is demoralisingly, agonisingly, indisputably anti-Māori.

I was even more shocked to see this Government will repeal legislation crafted to stop new generations from ever smoking. I used to think this was a non-partisan goal. Something any side might consider worthwhile, with cigarettes killing up to half their victims.

Thankfully, the new coalition arrived just in time to stop our woke youth from evading tobacco.

ROBERT KITCHIN/THE POST
The gravitas of the coalition announcement evaporates as Winston Peters takes the mic.

According to ASH surveys, the smoking rate in 2022 for Year 10 students was at an all-time low of 1.1%! (Down from 15.2% in 2000.)


Now the changes will likely cost thousands of lives (Māori hit hardest), add more than a billion dollars to our nation’s health bill in the coming decades. A new generation will be addicted.

PM Christopher Luxon says smokefree initiatives would – I kid you not – drive up crime. So, his solution to ram raids is more cancer?

It is an extraordinary coup de tobacco. But this is what we wanted, I guess: selling out our kids and grandkids’ future for a bizarre Māori-culture ban, a bad-kupu witch hunt in the public services.

As for Winston Peters (unlike ACT, the NZ First deal specifically mentions dumping the smokefree generation ban) well, at 78, he can just say to hell with the future. The future is for losers.

DAVID UNWIN/STUFF
The new Government is sworn in at Government House.

Peters, I suspect, doesn’t hate journalists because they’re holding him to account. He just hates everyone below the age of 65.

But unlike NZ First, National can’t afford to be all about the past.

You can sense the party dissipating, pinched between its coalition partners, two burger buns, no filling.

Not only did National get its throat cut in negotiations, but worse, it had its ideas stolen, repurposed, enhanced, by the populists, the culture warriors, the hard right-wingers.

National, or as I call it, Not-Labour, only exists as voting muscle memory exercised by a group too lazy, as yet, to tick a different right-leaning box. Why dilute that delicious umami of the dark side when voters can have the real thing elsewhere? No party survives in the airless centre.

Joel Maxwell: Christopher Luxon’s solution to ram raids is cancer?

I guess National has roads. You won’t be able to buy a taco with your tax savings without hitting a road, boulevard or cul-de sac of national significance.

Don't get me wrong, I love the new roads in the lower North Island that National got built. But that was under Steven Joyce, and in another era when they thought inflation no longer existed.

For now, National is lucky. Both ACT and NZ First have the qualities of a virus: powerful in their own way, but uniquely constrained. Just as the virus cannot exist outside its host, neither party in their current form can survive outside their leaders. Without Peters and David Seymour, they would be husks. (Both leaders, I suspect, would be husks without their parties too. But that’s psychology, not biology.)

Luxon is already being eaten alive by his new mates. Any hoped-for gravitas in the coalition announcement evaporated as a delighted Peters – grinning into his mic – opened fire on journalists.

What’s bad for Māori is bad for National. It strengthens its opponents on every side. Unfortunately, what’s good for Māori ain’t a great National vote winner either.

The party came unmoored from the good old days of John Key. I don’t know where we all go from here.

Joel Maxwell is a senior writer with Stuff’s Pou Tiaki team.

 

Never Forget: Jews and Muslims have Often imagined themselves in History as Siblings and Allies

ANOUAR MAJID11/26/2023

Excerpted from Tingis.

The forgotten history of Jews and Muslims needs to be recovered in order to challenge a multitude of dangerous false assumptions that exacerbate the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Historically, and even theologically, Jews have always been closer to Muslims than they were to Christians. It was in Muslim lands, the late eminent historian Bernard Lewis told us, that Arabic “became the language of science and philosophy, of government and commerce, even the language of Jewish theology when such a discipline began to develop under Islamic influence.” The Moroccan-Israeli historian Michel Abitbol couldn’t have been clearer: “The transformation of Judaism following its encounter with Islam affected all aspects of Jewish life profoundly and irreversibly.”  The great scholar of Jewish thought Maimonides (whose face graces the Israeli sheqel as seen above), wrote his classic Guide to the Perplexed in Judeo-Arabic. It is common today to talk about a Judeo-Christian tradition to distance the West from Islam, but one can more appropriately talk about a Judeo-Muslim one.

Actually, similarities between Judaism and Islam made Jews targets in Christian Europe. “Why should we pursue the enemies of the Christian faith in far distant lands,” wrote Peter the Venerable of Cluny to Louis VII in 1146, “while vile blasphemers far worse than any Saracens, namely the Jews, who are not far away from us, but who live in our midst, blaspheme, abuse, and trample on Christ and the Christian sacraments so freely and insolently and with impunity!?”

After their expulsion from Spain in the fifteenth century, Jews were welcomed into the Ottoman Empire and other Muslim lands. A Frenchman by the name of Isaac Zarfati, deploring the treatment of Jews in Germany, encouraged his co-religionists to join him: “I proclaim to you,” he wrote, “that Turkey is a land wherein nothing is lacking, and where, if you will, all shall yet be well with you.”

Prominent nineteenth-century Jewish scholars from Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire such as Abraham Geiger, Heinrich Graetz, and Ignaz Goldziher who played a key role in developing what we now call Islamic Studies were convinced of the superiority of Islam to Christianity and felt a strong kinship with Muslims. The British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, a descendant of Spanish Jews, was disdainful of European culture and proud of his Semitic ancestry. He called Jews the “Arabian tribe” and Arabs “Jews upon horseback.” In his novel Coningsby, or the New Generation, Disraeli wrote: “Why do these Saxon and Celtic societies persecute an Arabian race, from which they have adopted laws of sublime benevolence, and in the pages of whose literature they have found perpetual delight, instruction, and consolation?” For this reason, Jerusalem cannot be ruled by uncouth Europeans and “will ever remain,” he wrote in Tancred, or the New Crusade, “the appanage either of Israel or of Ishmael.”

Following their emancipation in Germany, Jews, eager to reclaim their Oriental heritage, used Moorish designs to build their synagogues because they offered the closest model they could imagine to the original Temple of Solomon. This led Orientalist scholar Paul de Lagarde to comment: “What is the sense of raising claims to be called an honorary German and yet building the holiest site that one possesses in Moorish style, so as to never ever let anyone forget that one is a Semite, an Asiatic, a foreigner?”

Still, Jews saw themselves as Orientals connected to Arabs and Muslims more so than they were to the alien traditions of their host European nations. As one writer put it in the monthly journal Jüdische Monatshefte: “Who is Ishmael to us?  What does the Islamic world mean to us?  The Muslim religious doctrine, customs and laws, the Muslim science and beautiful literature contain golden seeds which seem borrowed from us and the Jewish hereditary stock and thus seem familiar and related.” In fact, the association of Jews and Muslims persisted well into the Second World War when Nazis called the most degraded of their inmates in Auschwitz Muselmänner, or Muslims

The great Iraqi poet Ma’ruf al-Russafi wrote: “We are not, as our accusers say, enemies of the Children of Israel in secret or in public/How could we be, when they are our uncles, and the Arabs are kin to them of old through Ishmael?”

In 1948, King Abdullah of Transjordan told Golda Meir: “I believe with all my heart that divine providence has brought you back here [to Palestine and the Middle East], restoring you, a Semitic people who were exiled to Europe and shared in its progress, to the Semitic East which needs your knowledge and initiative. Only with your help and your guidance will the Semites be able to revive their ancient glory. We cannot expect genuine assistance from the Christian world, which looks down on Semitic people. We will progress only as the result of joint efforts.”

Just like Moroccan Jews in Israel and Muslim Moroccans are united by their love for their ancestral land, a better appreciation of the common heritage uniting Jews and Muslims could also help lessen tensions and establish a more durable foundation for peace.

Excerpted from Tingis with the author’s permission. Read the entire essay here .

 

How Long will Palestinians go on being Scapegoats for the West’s Atrocities in WWII?

SARA JAMSHIDI11/25/2023

Seattle, Wa. (Special to Informed Comment; Featured) – If an Arab writer would create a Palestinian version of Schindler’s List, and if an Arab, or a filmmaker sympathetic to Arabs, would create the movie, I wonder what the story would look like. I wonder what the writer would write. I wonder what the filmmaker would create.

How much do we know about Gaza when it is described as an open-air prison?

How much do we know about the genocide in Gaza perpetrated by Netanyahu?

Maybe we don’t know anything. We have no idea about the pain Jews suffered throughout the years. And we have no idea about the pain Palestinians suffer now. But we can relate to each pain when we compare the pain we suffer.

Let’s talk about two kinds of pain: physical and psychological.

When it comes to physical pain I think about toothache, headache, cancer surgery, and amputation. I think exile, witnessing murder, depression, and dealing with rape’s aftermath are psychological pains.

Did Jews recover from the pain they suffered during the holocaust?

Can we expect Palestinians, or Arabs for that matter, to recover from the genocide in Gaza?

CNN: “Blogger leaves haunting words in final video from Gaza”

The best line I’ve read so far is written by Adam Shatz in the London Review of Books:

“As for the people of Gaza, not only are they being forced to pay for Hamas’s actions: they [Gazans] are being forced, once again, to pay for Hitler’s crimes.”

What is the solution then?

As a peace journalist and peace activist, I still don’t know how to address atrocity. I have experienced atrocity myself. I know that both physical and psychological pain is so great that I don’t know how to talk about it. After years of therapy, nightmares, sweaty dreams, sleepless nights, and feeling shame, and guilt, I still think that Nonviolence is the key to winning a genocide, a holocaust … to defeating atrocities and heartlessness.

I understand that it is easier to talk about nonviolence than to do it. I know. But, there is no better alternative. I know because I’m talking from experience.

Sara Jamshidi

America’s Disastrous 60-Year War: Three Generations of Conspicuous Destruction by the Military-Industrial Complex

WILLIAM J. ASTORE

( Tomdispatch.com ) – In my lifetime of nearly 60 years, America has waged five major wars, winning one decisively, then throwing that victory away, while losing the other four disastrously. Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, as well as the Global War on Terror, were the losses, of course; the Cold War being the solitary win that must now be counted as a loss because its promise was so quickly discarded.

America’s war in Vietnam was waged during the Cold War in the context of what was then known as the domino theory and the idea of “containing” communism. Iraq and Afghanistan were part of the Global War on Terror, a post-Cold War event in which “radical Islamic terrorism” became the substitute for communism. Even so, those wars should be treated as a single strand of history, a 60-year war, if you will, for one reason alone: the explanatory power of such a concept.

For me, because of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation in January 1961, that year is the obvious starting point for what retired Army colonel and historian Andrew Bacevich recently termed America’s Very Long War (VLW). In that televised speech, Ike warned of the emergence of a military-industrial complex of immense strength that could someday threaten American democracy itself. I’ve chosen 2021 as the VLW’s terminus point because of the disastrous end of this country’s Afghan War, which even in its last years cost $45 billion annually to prosecute, and because of one curious reality that goes with it. In the wake of the crashing and burning of that 20-year war effort, the Pentagon budget leaped even higher with the support of almost every congressional representative of both parties as Washington’s armed attention turned to China and Russia.

At the end of two decades of globally disastrous war-making, that funding increase should tell us just how right Eisenhower was about the perils of the military-industrial complex. By failing to heed him all these years, democracy may indeed be in the process of meeting its demise.

The Prosperity of Losing Wars

Several things define America’s disastrous 60-year war. These would include profligacy and ferocity in the use of weaponry against peoples who could not respond in kind; enormous profiteering by the military-industrial complex; incessant lying by the U.S. government (the evidence in the Pentagon Papers for Vietnam, the missing WMD for the invasion of Iraq, and the recent Afghan War papers); accountability-free defeats, with prominent government or military officials essentially never held responsible; and the consistent practice of a militarized Keynesianism that provided jobs and wealth to a relative few at the expense of a great many. In sum, America’s 60-year war has featured conspicuous destruction globally, even as wartime production in the U.S. failed to better the lives of the working and middle classes as a whole.

Let’s take a closer look. Militarily speaking, throwing almost everything the U.S. military had (nuclear arms excepted) at opponents who had next to nothing should be considered the defining feature of the VLW. During those six decades of war-making, the U.S. military raged with white hot anger against enemies who refused to submit to its ever more powerful, technologically advanced, and destructive toys.


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I’ve studied and written about the Vietnam War and yet I continue to be astounded by the sheer range of weaponry dropped on the peoples of Southeast Asia in those years — from conventional bombs and napalm to defoliants like Agent Orange that still cause deaths almost half a century after our troops finally bugged out of there. Along with all that ordnance left behind, Vietnam was a testing ground for technologies of every sort, including the infamous electronic barrier that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara sought to establish to interdict the Ho Chi Minh trail.

When it came to my old service, the Air Force, Vietnam became a proving ground for the notion that airpower, using megatons of bombs, could win a war. Just about every aircraft in the inventory then was thrown at America’s alleged enemies, including bombers built for strategic nuclear attacks like the B-52 Stratofortress. The result, of course, was staggeringly widespread devastation and loss of life at considerable cost to economic fairness and social equity in this country (not to mention our humanity). Still, the companies producing all the bombs, napalm, defoliants, sensors, airplanes, and other killer products did well indeed in those years.

In terms of sheer bomb tonnage and the like, America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were more restrained, mainly thanks to the post-Vietnam development of so-called smart weapons. Nonetheless, the sort of destruction that rained down on Southeast Asia was largely repeated in the war on terror, similarly targeting lightly armed guerrilla groups and helpless civilian populations. And once again, expensive strategic bombers like the B-1, developed at a staggering cost to penetrate sophisticated Soviet air defenses in a nuclear war, were dispatched against bands of guerrillas operating in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Depleted uranium shells, white phosphorus, cluster munitions, as well as other toxic munitions, were used repeatedly. Again, short of nuclear weapons, just about every weapon that could be thrown at Iraqi soldiers, al-Qaeda or ISIS insurgents, or Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, would be used, including those venerable B-52s and, in one case, what was known as the MOAB, or mother of all bombs. And again, despite all the death and destruction, the U.S. military would lose both wars (one functionally in Iraq and the other all too publicly in Afghanistan), even as so many in and out of that military would profit and prosper from the effort.

What kind of prosperity are we talking about? The Vietnam War cycled through an estimated $1 trillion in American wealth, the Afghan and Iraq Wars possibly more than $8 trillion (when all the bills come due from the War on Terror). Yet, despite such costly defeats, or perhaps because of them, Pentagon spending is expected to exceed $7.3 trillion over the next decade. Never in the field of human conflict has so much money been gobbled up by so few at the expense of so many.

Throughout those 60 years of the VLW, the military-industrial complex has conspicuously consumed trillions of taxpayer dollars, while the U.S. military has rained destruction around the globe. Worse yet, those wars were generally waged with strong bipartisan support in Congress and at least not actively resisted by a significant “silent majority” of Americans. In the process, they have given rise to new forms of authoritarianism and militarism, the very opposite of representative democracy.

Paradoxically, even as “the world’s greatest military” lost those wars, its influence continued to grow in this country, except for a brief dip in the aftermath of Vietnam. It’s as if a gambler had gone on a 60-year losing binge, only to find himself applauded as a winner.

Constant war-making and a militarized Keynesianism created certain kinds of high-paying jobs (though not faintly as many as peaceful economic endeavors would have). Wars and constant preparations for the same also drove deficit spending since few in Congress wanted to pay for them via tax hikes. As a result, in all those years, as bombs and missiles rained down, wealth continued to flow up to ever more gigantic corporations like Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, places all too ready to hire retired generals to fill their boards.

And here’s another reality: very little of that wealth ever actually trickled down to workers unless they happened to be employed by those weapons makers, which — to steal the names of two of this country’s Hellfire missile-armed drones — have become this society’s predators and reapers. If a pithy slogan were needed here, you might call these the Build Back Better by Bombing years, which, of course, moves us squarely into Orwellian territory.

Learning from Orwell and Ike

Speaking of George Orwell, America’s 60-Year War, a losing proposition for the many, proved a distinctly winning one for the few and that wasn’t an accident either. In his book within a book in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell wrote all-too-accurately of permanent war as a calculated way of consuming the products of modern capitalism without generating a higher standard of living for its workers. That, of course, is the definition of a win-win situation for the owners. In his words:


“The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labor power without producing anything that can be consumed [by the workers].”

War, as Orwell saw it, was a way of making huge sums of money for a few at the expense of the many, who would be left in a state where they simply couldn’t fight back or take power. Ever. Think of such war production and war-making as a legalized form of theft, as Ike recognized in 1953 in his “cross of iron” speech against militarism. The production of weaponry, he declared eight years before he named “the military-industrial complex,” constituted theft from those seeking a better education, affordable health care, safer roads, or indeed any of the fruits of a healthy democracy attuned to the needs of its workers. The problem, as Orwell recognized, was that smarter, healthier workers with greater freedom of choice would be less likely to endure such oppression and exploitation.

And war, as he knew, was also a way to stimulate the economy without stimulating hopes and dreams, a way to create wealth for the few while destroying it for the many. Domestically, the Vietnam War crippled Lyndon Johnson’s plans for the Great Society. The high cost of the failed war on terror and of Pentagon budgets that continue to rise today regardless of results are now cited as arguments against Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal arguably would have never been funded if today’s vast military-industrial complex, or even the one in Ike’s day, had existed in the 1930s.

As political theorist Crane Brinton noted in The Anatomy of Revolution, a healthy and growing middle class, equal parts optimistic and opportunistic, is likely to be open to progressive, even revolutionary ideas. But a stagnant, shrinking, or slipping middle class is likely to prove politically reactionary as pessimism replaces optimism and protectionism replaces opportunity. In this sense, the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House was anything but a mystery and the possibility of an autocratic future no less so.

All those trillions of dollars consumed in wasteful wars have helped foster a creeping pessimism in Americans. A sign of it is the near-total absence of the very idea of peace as a shared possibility for our country. Most Americans simply take it for granted that war or threats of war, having defined our immediate past, will define our future as well. As a result, soaring military budgets are seen not as aberrations, nor even as burdensome, but as unavoidable, even desirable — a sign of national seriousness and global martial superiority.

You’re Going to Have It Tough at the End

It should be mind-blowing that, despite the wealth being created (and often destroyed) by the United States and impressive gains in worker productivity, the standard of living for workers hasn’t increased significantly since the early 1970s. One thing is certain: it hasn’t happened by accident.

For those who profit most from it, America’s 60-Year War has indeed been a resounding success, even if also a colossal failure when it comes to worker prosperity or democracy. This really shouldn’t surprise us. As former President James Madison warned Americans so long ago, no nation can protect its freedoms amid constant warfare. Democracies don’t die in darkness; they die in and from war. In case you hadn’t noticed (and I know you have), evidence of the approaching death of American democracy is all around us. It’s why so many of us are profoundly uneasy. We are, after all, living in a strange new world, worse than that of our parents and grandparents, one whose horizons continue to contract while hope contracts with them.

I’m amazed when I realize that, before his death in 2003, my father predicted this. He was born in 1917, survived the Great Depression by joining Franklin Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, and worked in factories at night for low pay before being drafted into the Army in World War II. After the war, he would live a modest middle-class life as a firefighter, a union job with decent pay and benefits. Here was the way my dad put it to me: he’d had it tough at the beginning of his life, but easy at the end, while I’d had it easy at the beginning, but I’d have it tough at the end.

He sensed, I think, that the American dream was being betrayed, not by workers like himself, but by corporate elites increasingly consumed by an ever more destructive form of greed. Events have proven him all too on target, as America has come to be defined by a greed-war for which no armistice, let alone an end, is promised. In twenty-first-century America, war and the endless preparations for it simply go on and on. Consider it beyond irony that, as this country’s corporate, political, and military champions claim they wage war to spread democracy, it withers at home.

And here’s what worries me most of all: America’s very long war of destruction against relatively weak countries and peoples may be over, or at least reduced to the odd moment of hostilities, but America’s leaders, no matter the party, now seem to favor a new cold war against China and now Russia. Incredibly, the old Cold War produced a win that was so sweet, yet so fleeting, that it seems to require a massive do-over.

Promoting war may have worked well for the military-industrial complex when the enemy was thousands of miles away with no capacity for hitting “the homeland,” but China and Russia do have that capacity. If a war with China or Russia (or both) comes to pass, it won’t be a long one. And count on one thing: America’s leaders, corporate, military, and political, won’t be able to shrug off the losses by looking at positive balance sheets and profit margins at weapons factories.


Copyright 2022 William J. Astore
Via Tomdispatch.com

About the Author

William J. Astore , a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), has taught at the Air Force Academy, the Naval Postgraduate School, and the Pennsylvania College of Technology. His personal blog is BracingViews.com. He can be reached at wjastore@gmail.com.

Meta Faces Complaint Over Privacy Fee for Paid Subscription Service

Post authorBy Cheryl King

Post date28 November 2023


Meta Platforms’ recent launch of its paid subscription service in Europe has encountered a significant challenge. Digital rights advocacy group NOYB (None Of Your Business) has filed a complaint with an Austrian regulator, arguing that the service effectively requires users to pay a fee for privacy.

Last month, Meta introduced the ad-free service for Facebook and Instagram, citing compliance with EU regulations that mandate user choice regarding data collection and targeted advertising. The subscription costs 9.99 euros ($10.90) per month for Web users and 12.99 euros for iOS and Android users. Meta justified the subscription model as a legitimate form of consent for an advertising-funded platform, aligning with a previous ruling from Europe’s highest court.

NOYB, founded renowned privacy activist Max Schrems, disagrees with Meta’s interpretation of consent. According to the group’s data protection lawyer Felix Mikolasch, “EU law requires that consent is the genuine free will of the user. Contrary to this law, Meta charges a ‘privacy fee’ of up to 250 euros per year if anyone dares to exercise their fundamental right to data protection.”

NOYB has filed the complaint with the Austrian Data Protection Authority, expressing dissatisfaction not only with the concept of the fee but also with Meta’s fee amount. The group argues that the fee is unjustifiable considering industry estimates that indicate only 3 percent of individuals wish to be tracked, while more than 99 percent do not choose to pay a “privacy fee.” NOYB warns that if Meta’s approach prevails, other competitors may adopt similar tactics.

Comparisons drawn to popular subscription-based services highlight the potential disproportionality of Meta’s fee. Netflix, for instance, offers a basic subscription plan for 7.99 euros, while YouTube Premium from Alphabet costs roughly 12 euros, and Spotify’s Premium service is priced at around 11 euros.

In its ongoing efforts to address privacy violations major tech companies, NOYB is urging the Austrian privacy authority to expedite actions against Meta, including both a cessation of the privacy fee and the imposition of a fine. The complaint is expected to be transferred to the Irish data protection watchdog, as Meta’s European headquarters are located in Ireland.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Meta Platforms offers a paid subscription service for Facebook and Instagram that provides an ad-free user experience and ensures compliance with EU rules regarding data collection and targeted advertising.

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Joe Biden administration 'bent backwards' to be very polite in its public response to Canadian allegations against India: Expert

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'I think the US response was actually quite remarkable because Canada is a very close ally, and if it was any other country than India, I think the US response would've been much more vocal and much more strident'

PTI Washington Published 28.11.23

Representational image.File

The Biden administration, because of the significance it attaches to its ties with New Delhi, “bent backwards” to be very polite in its public responses following the Canadian allegations against India over the killing of one of its citizens, a top American expert on India-US relations has said.


“I think the US response was actually quite remarkable because Canada is a very close ally, and if it was any other country than India, I think the US response would've been much more vocal and much more strident,” Ashley J Tellis, the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and a senior fellow at the prestigious Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told PTI in an interview.

Tellis was responding to a question on the criticism in India about the US response to the Canadian allegations that they were investigating allegations that the Indian government was involved in the killing of Khalistani separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada.

India has dismissed the allegations as "absurd" and "motivated" and has told Canada to provide it with any evidence that it might have.
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The Biden administration has expressed concern over the allegations and urged India to cooperate with Canadian authorities in this investigation.

“I think this administration bent backwards to be very, very polite in its public response, encouraging India to obviously join the Canadian investigation, but without uttering any words of direct condemnation. And I think that is quite remarkable for the administration. I think people should recognise how different the administration's response was, both in its tonality and in its substance,” Tellis said in response to a question.

Tellis, who is considered to be the most respectable and foremost American expert on Indian issues, said that the three years of the Biden administration have been fantastic for the India-US relationship.

“It has been fantastic. When I look back, it is hard to imagine that any administration, particularly after Trump, would have put so much investment into this relationship with New Delhi. It is really to President (Joe) Biden's credit that he has taken responsibility for this relationship. You can see that very clearly in the way that he treated the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) when he came on the State Visit and all the initiatives that have occurred since,” he said.

“The big question now is whether the president will be able to go to India for Republic Day and for the QUAD meeting. Next year, my suspicion is even if the president goes, which would be wonderful if he can pull that off, I think will be a year that consumes both governments in different ways because of the election,” he said.

“So, the tempo of the relationship will obviously proceed as it has been in the last several years. But I do not think both sides will have the capacity for big initiatives because President Biden is going to be completely consumed by an election process that lasts almost the entire year all the way to November of next year. And Prime Minister Modi will be up for election sometime in the first half of the next calendar year,” he said.

“So, I think expecting big initiatives might be tough, but there is so much on the plate already that we don't need big initiatives. We need some time to just enjoy what we have eaten, and the digestion has to work its way through,” Tellis said.

The overall picture of the relationship, he said, is very good. “There is a remarkable commitment on the part of the leadership on both sides to take the relationship forward. Both Prime Minister Modi and President Biden have put very impressive chips on the table with respect to where they want to go,” he said.


“The strategic dimension of the relationship is well understood, but the technology dimension, the educational dimension, the issues relating to things that previously we did not pay too much attention to. Everything from agriculture to science and technology, everything now is on the table as an aspect of cooperation,” he said.


“In the context of the competition with China, the US competition with China, the effort that the administration is making to diversify the production base, particularly for manufacturing, is really very impressive. India features very highly in that plan because it is seen as a trusted partner. So, I think the future of the relationship is extremely bright. We will always have problems that have to be managed along the way, but as long as both sides keep their eye on the ball and focus on what the long-term opportunities are, I think we'll be in a very good place,” Tellis said.


China, he said, is a very important factor in the India-US relationship.


“And we should not pretend that it's not because it adds a dose of realism when we talk about the relationship. China has of course brought this situation about. I mean I think the US-India relationship was moving in the right direction even before China was seen as a strategic competitor.," he said.


"But China certainly accelerated that process because it has threatened India and pushed India in a sense almost into US arms. And it has threatened US interests in the Indo-Pacific. That has pushed the United States even closer to India because it sees India as a very important part of that global strategy of coping with China's rise,” Tellis said.